Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

I love a good theme for a party so I was very excited when my sister chose to have a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party for my niece’s 1st birthday – what a great theme! In true party style, we all had to wear a hat and I discovered that it is amazing what you can achieve with a cheap pack of playing cards and a hot glue gun. My Mum and sister had spent ages making little labels and signs with quotes from the book and the room looked fab.

As you can probably guess, my job was to provide a cake. I decided I wanted to do a wonky cake using some of the characters from the book. The first problem was that I hadn’t made a wonky cake before and the second was that I didn’t really have the right sized tins. Despite these hurdles, it didn’t turn out too badly in the end, although different sized tiers would have worked better. The top two cakes were vanilla, the middle one was lemon and poppy seed and the bottom tier was dark chocolate. Grace and Faith made a beeline for the teapot cake and made sure we brought it home with us. Nothing like taking a gift to a party and then bringing it back with you!

I also offered to make different coloured macaroons for the tea party. I hadn’t tried these before and quickly discovered that I don’t possess the talent to make them either! After 3 attempts I managed to produce something that looked and tasted vaguely like a macaroon, then I resorted to making coloured meringues instead! Must make time to practice making macaroons, I don’t like to be beaten…

My Mum managed to get a white rabbit costume for Faith, which she looked really cute in, and 2 giant playing card for Grace, which I fastened together with ribbon to make a tabard. I stuck playing cards onto an old birthday cake shaped hat for Dale and glued playing cards to a hair band to make myself a hat (which Grace is modelling in the photo). I think we were definitely the best dressed guests!

It was a fab party and I hope Florence enjoyed it. Still can’t believe she’s a whole year old – where does the time go?